The Oldest Use of Tile in Architectural Decorations of the Islamic Period of Iran and Recognition of Combined Fractured Pieces of Glazed Pottery and Plaster-Brick Decorations Technique in Khajeh Atabak Kerman

The companion of different materials in architectural decorations of Iran, during the Islamic era, in many cases has opened up new art styles and techniques and changed the aesthetic look of the cultures that carry this phenomenon. The accompaniment of brick, plaster and glaze decorations is one of the fascinating changes in the history of art of Iranian architectural decorations that its history of invention has remained somewhat obscure. Meanwhile, the initial idea of using tiles in the decorations of Iranian architecture in the Islamic era remains largely unknown. Tile is a type of architectural decoration that may be originated from ancient Iran, and therefore, little information is available about the manufacturing and execution techniques and specimens of tile works from the early centuries of the Islamic era. This aim of this work was to distinguish between the tile and the glazed-brick. From the view-point of the researcher, when the thickness of the glazed-ceramic exceeds from its width, the work becomes glazed-brick, while the width of the glazed-ceramic become greater than its thickness, it will be a tile. The main purpose of this research was to obtain the information on the oldest tiles of the Islamic period in Iran, which could be found as the glazed-ceramic in the architectural design Khajeh Atabak in Kerman. In order to achieve the aims of this research, the study of written sources and the field studies were carried out simultaneously, to characterize the tile works in Iranian architectural decorations, especially at the tomb of Khajeh Atabak in Kerman. On the basis of the results obtained, it could be said that unfortunately from the Islamic period in Iran till the 11th century AD., no dated tiles have been left. Many of the tiles with no written date on them have been dated by researchers regardless the manufacturing technology, and only based on the tiles appearance and archaeological characteristics.  These dating studies have not been performed based on the laboratory studies and they were actually done with speculation, so are not scientifically acceptable. For example, for decades it was thought that the oldest tiles in Iranian architecture belong to the Qazvin Jame-Mosque, while as a result of field studies realized in this research, it was found that there is no antique tile in this monument, where the color of the painting was mistakenly recognized as tile. Donald Wilber reported this error for the first time, and over the several decades, all the researchers repeated the same error without careful scrutiny. Anyway, the tile samples of five monuments with a collection of tiles or with one single tile were identified as the oldest tiles of the Islamic period in Iran. One of the main results of this research is to identify the use of fractured pieces of glazed pottery in architectural decorations, where some researchers have identified these works as the tiles. In these cases, both sides of the pieces of potteries have glaze and the body is very thin and delicate along with the arches and curves. Moreover, in some cases the edges of the pottery container can also be seen. Achieving this result reinforces this hypothesis that using the broken pottery container may have formed the first idea for tiles construction.